Read and write to binary files in C?

Question

Does anyone have an example of code that can write to a binary file. And also code that can read a binary file and output to screen. Looking at examples I can write to a fi

Answer 1

I really struggled to find a way to read a binary file into a byte array in C++ that would output the same hex values I see in a hex editor. After much trial and error, this seems to be the fastest way to do so without extra casts. By default it loads the entire file into memory, but only prints the first 1000 bytes.

string Filename = "BinaryFile.bin";
FILE* pFile;
pFile = fopen(Filename.c_str(), "rb");
fseek(pFile, 0L, SEEK_END);
size_t size = ftell(pFile);
fseek(pFile, 0L, SEEK_SET);
uint8_t* ByteArray;
ByteArray = new uint8_t[size];
if (pFile != NULL)
{
    int counter = 0;
    do {
        ByteArray[counter] = fgetc(pFile);
        counter++;
    } while (counter <= size);
    fclose(pFile);
}
for (size_t i = 0; i < 800; i++) {
    printf("%02X ", ByteArray[i]);
}

Answer 2

Reading and writing binary files is pretty much the same as any other file, the only difference is how you open it:

unsigned char buffer[10];
FILE *ptr;

ptr = fopen("test.bin","rb");  // r for read, b for binary

fread(buffer,sizeof(buffer),1,ptr); // read 10 bytes to our buffer

You said you can read it, but it's not outputting correctly... keep in mind that when you "output" this data, you're not reading ASCII, so it's not like printing a string to the screen:

for(int i = 0; i<10; i++)
    printf("%u ", buffer[i]); // prints a series of bytes

Writing to a file is pretty much the same, with the exception that you're using fwrite() instead of fread():

FILE *write_ptr;

write_ptr = fopen("test.bin","wb");  // w for write, b for binary

fwrite(buffer,sizeof(buffer),1,write_ptr); // write 10 bytes from our buffer

---

Since we're talking Linux.. there's an easy way to do a sanity check. Install hexdump on your system (if it's not already on there) and dump your file:

mike@mike-VirtualBox:~/C$ hexdump test.bin
0000000 457f 464c 0102 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000010 0001 003e 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
...

Now compare that to your output:

mike@mike-VirtualBox:~/C$ ./a.out 
127 69 76 70 2 1 1 0 0 0

hmm, maybe change the printf to a %x to make this a little clearer:

mike@mike-VirtualBox:~/C$ ./a.out 
7F 45 4C 46 2 1 1 0 0 0

Hey, look! The data matches up now^*. Awesome, we must be reading the binary file correctly!

^{*Note the bytes are just swapped on the output but that data is correct, you can adjust for this sort of thing}

Answer 3

There are a few ways to do it. If I want to read and write binary I usually use open(), read(), write(), close(). Which are completely different than doing a byte at a time. You work with integer file descriptors instead of FILE * variables. fileno will get an integer descriptor from a FILE * BTW. You read a buffer full of data, say 32k bytes at once. The buffer is really an array which you can read from really fast because it's in memory. And reading and writing many bytes at once is faster than one at a time. It's called a blockread in Pascal I think, but read() is the C equivalent.

I looked but I don't have any examples handy. OK, these aren't ideal because they also are doing stuff with JPEG images. Here's a read, you probably only care about the part from open() to close(). fbuf is the array to read into, sb.st_size is the file size in bytes from a stat() call.

    fd = open(MASKFNAME,O_RDONLY);
    if (fd != -1) {
      read(fd,fbuf,sb.st_size);
      close(fd);
      splitmask(fbuf,(uint32_t)sb.st_size); // look at lines, etc
      have_mask = 1;
    }

Here's a write: (here pix is the byte array, jwidth and jheight are the JPEG width and height so for RGB color we write height * width * 3 color bytes). It's the # of bytes to write.

void simpdump(uint8_t *pix, char *nm) { // makes a raw aka .data file
  int sdfd;
  sdfd = open(nm,O_WRONLY | O_CREAT);
  if (sdfd == -1) {
    printf("bad open\n");
    exit(-1);
  }
  printf("width: %i height: %i\n",jwidth,jheight);  // to the console
  write(sdfd,pix,(jwidth*jheight*3));
  close(sdfd);
}

Look at man 2 open, also read, write, close. Also this old-style jpeg example.c: https://github.com/LuaDist/libjpeg/blob/master/example.c I'm reading and writing an entire image at once here. But they're binary reads and writes of bytes, just a lot at once.

"But when I try to read from a file it is not outputting correctly." Hmmm. If you read a number 65 that's (decimal) ASCII for an A. Maybe you should look at man ascii too. If you want a 1 that's ASCII 0x31. A char variable is a tiny 8-bit integer really, if you do a printf as a %i you get the ASCII value, if you do a %c you get the character. Do %x for hexadecimal. All from the same number between 0 and 255.

Answer 4

I'm quite happy with my "make a weak pin storage program" solution. Maybe it will help people who need a very simple binary file IO example to follow.

$ ls
WeakPin  my_pin_code.pin  weak_pin.c
$ ./WeakPin
Pin: 45 47 49 32
$ ./WeakPin 8 2
$ Need 4 ints to write a new pin!
$./WeakPin 8 2 99 49
Pin saved.
$ ./WeakPin
Pin: 8 2 99 49
$
$ cat weak_pin.c
// a program to save and read 4-digit pin codes in binary format

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define PIN_FILE "my_pin_code.pin"

typedef struct { unsigned short a, b, c, d; } PinCode;


int main(int argc, const char** argv)
{
    if (argc > 1)  // create pin
    {
        if (argc != 5)
        {
            printf("Need 4 ints to write a new pin!\n");
            return -1;
        }
        unsigned short _a = atoi(argv[1]);
        unsigned short _b = atoi(argv[2]);
        unsigned short _c = atoi(argv[3]);
        unsigned short _d = atoi(argv[4]);
        PinCode pc;
        pc.a = _a; pc.b = _b; pc.c = _c; pc.d = _d;
        FILE *f = fopen(PIN_FILE, "wb");  // create and/or overwrite
        if (!f)
        {
            printf("Error in creating file. Aborting.\n");
            return -2;
        }

        // write one PinCode object pc to the file *f
        fwrite(&pc, sizeof(PinCode), 1, f);  

        fclose(f);
        printf("Pin saved.\n");
        return 0;
    }

    // else read existing pin
    FILE *f = fopen(PIN_FILE, "rb");
    if (!f)
    {
        printf("Error in reading file. Abort.\n");
        return -3;
    }
    PinCode pc;
    fread(&pc, sizeof(PinCode), 1, f);
    fclose(f);

    printf("Pin: ");
    printf("%hu ", pc.a);
    printf("%hu ", pc.b);
    printf("%hu ", pc.c);
    printf("%hu\n", pc.d);
    return 0;
}
$

Answer 5

This is an example to read and write binary jjpg or wmv video file. FILE *fout; FILE *fin;

Int ch;
char *s;
fin=fopen("D:\\pic.jpg","rb");
if(fin==NULL)
     {  printf("\n Unable to open the file ");
         exit(1);
      }

 fout=fopen("D:\\ newpic.jpg","wb");
 ch=fgetc(fin);
       while (ch!=EOF)
             { 
                  s=(char *)ch;
                  printf("%c",s);
                 ch=fgetc (fin):
                 fputc(s,fout);
                 s++;
              }

        printf("data read and copied");
        fclose(fin);
        fclose(fout);

Answer 6

this questions is linked with the question How to write binary data file on C and plot it using Gnuplot by CAMILO HG. I know that the real problem have two parts: 1) Write the binary data file, 2) Plot it using Gnuplot.

The first part has been very clearly answered here, so I do not have something to add.

For the second, the easy way is send the people to the Gnuplot manual, and I sure someone find a good answer, but I do not find it in the web, so I am going to explain one solution (which must be in the real question, but I new in stackoverflow and I can not answer there):

After write your binary data file using fwrite(), you should create a very simple program in C, a reader. The reader only contains the same structure as the writer, but you use fread() instead fwrite(). So it is very ease to generate this program: copy in the reader.c file the writing part of your original code and change write for read (and "wb" for "rb"). In addition, you could include some checks for the data, for example, if the length of the file is correct. And finally, your program need to print the data in the standard output using a printf().

For be clear: your program run like this

$ ./reader data.dat

X_position Y_position  (it must be a comment for Gnuplot)*

1.23 2.45

2.54 3.12

5.98 9.52

Okey, with this program, in Gnuplot you only need to pipe the standard output of the reader to the Gnuplot, something like this:

plot '< ./reader data.dat'

This line, run the program reader, and the output is connected with Gnuplot and it plot the data.

*Because Gnuplot is going to read the output of the program, you must know what can Gnuplot read and plot and what can not.